


Analemma

by lordvoldemortsnipple



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drunken Ramblings, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pining, Post-Finale, expressed through visual poetry, post armageddidn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldemortsnipple/pseuds/lordvoldemortsnipple
Summary: It's time Crowley makes his point.(Or: Two drunk immortals talk about time)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 64





	Analemma

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to experiment a little with portraying voice through type, so my advice is to _not_ download this fic, as you'll lose all the hard work I've put into the visual edition.  
> Of course, if it's easier for you, you can always Hide Creator's Style, and it will look just as easily readable as any other fic. I've made sure it's accessible
> 
> All the information on time in the fic is basically paraphrasing from what I remember of _The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli_ , a book I bought for the wonderful cover and read because it was really interesting

  


  


“The thing— the thing _is_ ,” Crowley starts, pointing at Aziraphale with his wine glass, giving it quick shakes as he organizes his thoughts. It’s a miracle nothing spills over, but the wine doesn’t really matter, what’s important is what he has to say. “The thing is… uh. What was the question again?”

“I didn’t, didn’t question  anything,” Aziraphale mutters, nursing his own wine glass against his chest, annoyingly endearing as he sits very proper on his horrible tartan sofa.

Crowley is sitting on a horrible tartan sofa too, and it’s both dreadful and wonderful to realize he’s made a habit of it now. End of the world avoided, and now he comes to the bookshop whenever he pleases. He gets to chase clients away and persuade Aziraphale into closing early, and sometimes they sit and chat, and they most definitely drink. The horribly tartan sofa molds into whatever shape he takes, or position he sits in, and it’s… what’s a word, to say dreadful and wonderful all at once? Awesome? Hm, too american. It’s... it’s... “ _Te rrific!”_

“Suppose it is,” Aziraphale agrees, cheeks a terrific shade of pink. “Still, not a question, dear. I said... said we now have… _oh! Now we have t-”_

 **“T IME!”** Crowley lets out, lifting his arm in the air, wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the glass. “We’ve got _time!_ And the thing is! ...What’s the thing?”

 _“Time?”_ Aziraphale questions as an answer. 

_“Time!”_ Crowley confirms. “So  _the thing is—_ what’s time, even? Time is… _ wooooosh,_ it’s what’s _here_ and _here_ and **then...**

_**here!”**_

“Time is in every  moment,  it is…  it shifts  and moves  and it goes on and on, and on,  and it flows as a river  with a steady current  taking all of us downstream,  time is a one way path, and it’s here,” Aziraphale says, a hand turning in the air as he nods along. He pauses then to tip his head back, glass pressed against his lips, and Crowley drinks the sight with the same appetite Azirpahale drinks the wine.

“Time is not fixed, it’s like, the river, there’s those fish, they go _‘H OOP! What’s this present! Gotta- gotta jump, wooop, up the stream, into the past!’_ What’re they called,” Crowley frowns as he thinks of the word, “orange fish, the one you like— _sushi!”_

_“Su shi!”_ Azirapahle exclaims with enthusiasm. “I do _love_ sushi. But, I’m sure, Crowley, I’m sure sushi doesn’t time travel. Does it?”

“There’s no, _that’s the thing,_ angel, there's no TIME!” Crowley exclaims, sitting up on the couch, leg curled beneath himself to give him more height. “Time _is,_ time is _fake_ , like numbers and rules it’s, uh, not _real_ real.”

“Time is abstract,” Aziraphale supplies. “It’s like Arishtot- Arristit-  Arsto- Harry  Totles — oh, do you remember him, Crowley? Lovely fellow, one of the— one of the Greeks. He said, he said: 

_ TIME  IS THE MEASUREMENT  OF CHANGE _

“So time is... Time is change. It’s _g rowth_ and _de cay_ and it’s… not _backwards,”_ Aziraphale says. He puts down his empty glass, giving it a dejected look. “ _What’s gone is gone.”_

Crowley stumbles upwards, hand on the armrest to steady himself. “More- more wine, angel?”

“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale smiles at him, eyes bright and aura shining with gusto. Is a moment gone when time passes? Aziraphale loses the smile to taste the new cup Crowley pours for him, but it will stay in Crowley’s mind, branded in his memories. If it’s there and unchanged, does time touch it? 

Aziraphale puts down the glass again, lips red, tinted with wine, and Crowley tries very hard not to taste them. He tries not to move into Aziraphale’s sofa, find the space around the angel where he could fit, a demon in every nook and cranny he can greedily claim.

“Time,” Crowley slithers his way into sitting on Azirapahle’s armrest, the limit he can actually push, right at the edge of allowed. “Time is made _up_ , it’s humans looking at the stars and deciding that’s a _mea surm-_ a, a unit. And it doesn’t- it doesn’t work! What’s— _what’s a le ap year!_ A leap year is time going _‘oOps, my bad, have an extra day!’_ What measurement is _that?”_

Aziraphale pats his knee. “It does take… _hmpth,_ it does take a _leap of faith.”_

 _“A ziraphale.”_ Crowley groans, and takes a long sip straight from the bottle. He snorts afterwards, betraying himself.

Azirapahle can’t hold a straight face either, pressing the wine glass against his lips to hide his contained laughter. Only when he manages to stop does he offer, as a compensation, “There’s...ah, there’s daylight savings too, I suppose.”

“Daylight savings! Ughhh!” Crowley lets out, swinging the bottle with a wide gesture with his arm. “That’s— that’s BOLLOCKS!”

“Although,” Aziraphale says, as if he wasn’t the one to bring it up, “at least there’s… the, the system, the zones of time-”

“-The time zones-”

“-The time zones,” Aziraphale continues, shifting to sit up straighter, shoulder nudging Crowley’s arm. “Remember how it was before? Every little town with it’s own time, oh, it was _aw ful!”_

“Ah!” Crowley laughs, delighted, a grin growing on his face. “Once, there was that little station in Paris, with the, the different hours from the rest of the city, remember that one? One of my best work.”

“That was _you?”_ Azirapahle’s tone is colored with indignation. “Crowley! That made travelling so confusing!”

“Come on, angel, TIME _is_ confusing!” Crowley gets up again, moving around in front of Aziraphale’s horrific couch. “Remember those, when they made mechanical clocks?”

“The ones, the ones with the…” Aziraphale makes a few back and forth swinging gestures with the hand holding his wine glass, as if a conductor in an orchestra.

“Those came after, didn’t they? The, the _pendulums!”_ Crowley remembers his point. “It’s, here’s the thing:

pendulum clockswork with, like a weight. They use gravity see, to swing  back and forth, that’s what makes  the gears move! Gravity gives it the speed to swing up, its force pulls it back down, and ticks by the second. So gravity makes the clock move! But TIME,  time isn’t always the same, it’s motion and ‘snot fixed, like that fella said, it’s relative, because, because TIME, time’s affected by gravity! Gravity  pulls on it, so time is different everywhere. So the closest to the center of gravity, the slower time is.

“How is _that_ a measurement?” Crowley asks again, stopping in front of Aziraphale. “Time is, look, if you’re here on Earth time moves _much slower_ than it does out there in space. There’s no such thing as a right time, only a... a right _ now,_ in relation to us. There’s no, no wrong time. Just different speeds.”

“No wrong time,” Aziraphale repeats, in a soft tone as he gazes up at Crowley. “Just here and now.”

“So here’s the thing.” Crowley gracelessly falls down onto his knees by Azirapahle’s feet, and his eyes don’t dare to look above the tartan bow tie that matches the horrible sofa.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks with some concern, leaning forward.

“The thing, the thing is,” Crowley presses on. “You said we’ve got time now, but what does that mean? You said... It feels like you’re here on Earth while I’m kept out among the stars. The same time passes us by, but you look at me and think _it’s too fast.”_

“Crowley.” Aziraphale says again. His voice is terrific, his words terrifying. “Perhaps we should sober up.”

Crowley meets his eyes at last. It’s just as he described, seconds seem to speed by in the take of a deep breath, as he braces himself for whatever this will bring. He doesn’t want to sober up, he wants this moment, to keep it from the clutches of time so it doesn’t change for the worse. “Yeah, alright.”

Aziraphale puts his glass down, and closes his eyes, nose scrunched up as he miracles the alcohol away. Crowley gives himself a second to savor the sight before he closes his own eyes, and cracks his neck, the bottle in his hand growing heavier as he forces the wine out of his system. 

  


Sobriety is a curse. It weights on his head, stopping him from lifting his eyes above Aziraphale’s legs. He’s kneeling by Aziraphale’s feet, which is not a good moment for him. Crowley turns his head over his shoulder to swipe his gaze across the room, trying to find his glasses. He spots them on a shelf, casually dropped on top of a pile of books at the start of the evening. 

“Sssorry,” he says, moving his weight to the back of his feet, clumsily getting up. “I....uh...”

“Crowley.”

He stumbles backwards, towards the bookshelf. “Listen, it’s—”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice is firm, and he gets up in a fluid motion.

Crowley stops, unable to move as he watches Aziraphale approach. Motion is change, is time, and he doesn’t wish to accelerate his rejection.

“Aristotle once said time is the measurement of change,” Aziraphale tells him again, his tone gentle. “You think I go too slow, dear, because my heart hasn’t aged a day since I realized it is immutably yours.”

Crowley lets out a strangled, whiny sound, dragged out of his throat against his will. Two soft, careful hands cup Crowley’s face, his burning cheeks cradled as if Aziraphale holds something precious. He’s unable to do anything but to hold onto Aziraphale’s wrists. He’s been brought down from the stars, to a pace unfamiliar to him. “Asssiraphale.”

“I said now we have time,” Aziraphale continues, as a smile blooms in his face. There’s a glint in his eyes. “The point I wished to make, my dearest, _the thing is,_ now we have room for change.”

“Oh.” Crowley nods, doing his best to not inconveniently discorporate. “That, that sssounds good.” 

“Splendid,” Aziraphale says quietly, and Crowley’s chest bursts with warmth. 

He’s not sure which of them is the first to move, but gravity pulls them towards each other. Here is a new measurement to mark the passage of time. There’s the time that came before, and here begins every moment after. A new era shaped by Aziraphale’s mouth on his own, when time warps around them both, slowed down by the hands that hold Crowley so tenderly he wouldn't mind if time stopped all together.

Time will go on, and Crowley will gladly measure its passage with every touch he's granted. It was about time someone came up with a functional unit, after all, and this one Crowley will be sure to remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this!  
> If you're on tumblr, consider reblogging the [post I made advertising this fic](https://lordvoldemortsnipple.tumblr.com/post/622549780620541952)? We all know how terrible it is at showing linked posts on the tags, and I'd love you forever ;)


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